Risks mount as climate change hits the high Himalaya
Flooding, landslides and shifts in agriculture are rapidly becoming typical at the roof of the world. Why do residents still lack actionable guidance about how to adapt?
Kanchi Sherpa does not feel that the summers are getting any warmer in the Everest region of Nepal. “We don’t feel any hotter,” says the 45-year-old from Solukhumbu district of eastern Nepal. Kanchi works odd jobs and minds young cattle in a household in Monjo, 34 kilometers uphill from the Salleri Solukhumbu district headquarter.
Kanchi’s husband is a trekking guide who takes groups of trekkers during peak season to the Ama Dablam mountain, called the most beautiful peak in the world for its well-chiseled pyramid shape. Her 25-year-old daughter Pemba Doma works as a nanny in Cyprus. “None of us is really worried about the climate,” Kanchi says.
Even so, by all scientific measures and observations1, 2, the climate is changing around Kanchi. Such shifts presage difficult challenges for those living at, or depending upon, the roof of the world.
The Himalaya is often referred to as the third pole of the planet. They hold the largest reservoir of ice and snow after the Arctic and Antarctic. Their snowpack fuels not just Nepal but many parts of the Indian subcontinent.
In the past 50 years, climate change-induced warming has triggered melting of this reserve at a far quicker rate than in any other recorded period. Meltwater is forming moraine-rimmed glacial lakes at the base of the mountains, many of which are floods waiting to happen. Rainfall and monsoon patterns have changed, prompting shifts in vegetation and agriculture, and landslides from extreme rain events remain a large threat.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres underlined the grave nature of this climate emergency in his appeal to the world in November 2023. “I am here to cry out from the rooftop of the world – stop this madness,” he said in a video, standing in front of some of the tallest peaks in the region, referring to the world’s overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels that trigger warming.
Without access to the latest scientific information or early warnings, many people in the Himalaya, live in jeopardy of having their homes, livelihoods and culture simply swept away. Many more people farther south risk seeing permanent shifts in how they live their lives.
Lukla village, gateway to the Everest region.
Lukla village, gateway to the Everest region.
Kanchi Sherpa does not feel that the summers are getting any warmer in the Everest region of Nepal. “We don’t feel any hotter,” says the 45-year-old from Solukhumbu district of eastern Nepal. Kanchi works odd jobs and minds young cattle in a household in Monjo, 34 kilometers uphill from the Salleri Solukhumbu district headquarter.
Kanchi’s husband is a trekking guide who takes groups of trekkers during peak season to the Ama Dablam mountain, called the most beautiful peak in the world for its well-chiseled pyramid shape. Her 25-year-old daughter Pemba Doma works as a nanny in Cyprus. “None of us is really worried about the climate,” Kanchi says.
Even so, by all scientific measures and observations1, 2, the climate is changing around Kanchi. Such shifts presage difficult challenges for those living at, or depending upon, the roof of the world.
The Himalaya is often referred to as the third pole of the planet. They hold the largest reservoir of ice and snow after the Arctic and Antarctic. Their snowpack fuels not just Nepal but many parts of the Indian subcontinent.
In the past 50 years, climate change-induced warming has triggered melting of this reserve at a far quicker rate than in any other recorded period. Meltwater is forming moraine-rimmed glacial lakes at the base of the mountains, many of which are floods waiting to happen. Rainfall and monsoon patterns have changed, prompting shifts in vegetation and agriculture, and landslides from extreme rain events remain a large threat.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres underlined the grave nature of this climate emergency in his appeal to the world in November 2023. “I am here to cry out from the rooftop of the world – stop this madness,” he said in a video, standing in front of some of the tallest peaks in the region, referring to the world’s overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels that trigger warming.
Without access to the latest scientific information or early warnings, many people in the Himalaya, live in jeopardy of having their homes, livelihoods and culture simply swept away. Many more people farther south risk seeing permanent shifts in how they live their lives.
Lukla village, gateway to the Everest region.
Lukla village, gateway to the Everest region.
"No one has ever told us about climate change"
Kalpana Rai
“No one has ever told us about climate change – in fact, our village administrators and most of our folks think it is getting less hot by the year,” says Kalpana Rai from Monjo. Sitting on the cliffside of one of the most popular hiking trails from Monjo to Namche Bazaar, she sells knick-knacks. Along with her husband, a trekking guide, she earns enough to sustain a family of four. Kalpana says her family is not bothered by talks of fast melting glaciers.
“These are nature’s gifts – they protect us, they won’t harm us if we don’t harm them.”
Vulnerable valleys
In 2017, scientists analysed hundreds of satellite images to map 1,541 glacial lakes in the Nepal Himalaya. 64 of these are dangerously full, close to bursting2 and flooding human habitations downstream, warns Sudeep Thakuri, a climate scientist at MidWest University in Surkhet, Nepal. Along with collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Thakuri scrutinised a remote sensing-based inventory from across the Nepal Himalaya to find that the number of glacial lakes had more than doubled in 2017, from 606 in 1977.
“The total surface area of these lakes has increased by 25% in just the 30 years between 1987 to 2017,” he says, showing the classic before-after pictures of the glaciers that establish this stark change.
Since the early 1960s, 29 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been recorded in the Nepal Himalaya, the most recent ones being in 2016 and 2017. In June 2016, an outburst of the Lhotse glacier lake, one of the largest in the Everest region, flooded the Imja valley with over 2 million cubic meters of water. American hydrologist Elizabeth Byers, who was doing field work in the valley with her colleagues, remembers hearing something like a rock fall. Within no time she saw a “black tongue of water, boulders, and silt” racing downhill toward the village of Chukhung in the valley. “I felt powerless to help people…and at the same time experienced utter fascination at the geologic process unfolding before my eyes,” she said. Byers, who ironically helps local communities improve awareness of glacial lake outburst floods, recorded a video of the deluge that was later published as first hand evidence of an outburst flood event3.
In April 2017, a catastrophic outburst of the Langmale glacial lake swept large parts of the Makalu-Barun National Park. The flood stemmed from a massive rockfall from the nearby Saldim Peak, and coupled with an avalanche, caused significant damage – carving canyons, stripping vegetation from the banks of river Barun, and depositing debris and boulders along a 6.5 km stretch of the river.
In mid-2018, Pramod Bhattarai, the former Chief Conservation Officer of Sagarmatha National Park, undertook a household survey4 in the highly vulnerable Khumbu region closer to the glacial lakes, upward of Namche in the eastern Himalaya. Bhattarai and his co-researchers were trying to find out how the locals perceive climate change trends, patterns and risks. “These communities in the eastern Himalayas are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their reliance on the monsoon cycle for farming and due to the continuous threat of melting glaciers,” Bhattarai says.
Of the 1,500 households, they managed to speak to 298 from five communities in Namche, Thame, Khumjung, Phortse, and Laushasa, some of the most populated areas within the Khumbu region. More than 70% of the Sherpas reported feeling an increase in temperature and drought in Khumbu. Upwards of three-quarters noticed decreases in both the intensity and frequency of snowfall. However, more than half of those surveyed were neither convinced that the phenomenon of climate change is exaggerated, nor did they have much of a view on the issue.
Kancha Sherpa has witnessed decades of such change firsthand. At 92 years old, Kancha is the only surviving member of the first summit ascent of Mount Everest expedition, led by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
This outburst of the Lhotse glacier lake, one of the largest in the Everest region, was caught on video in 2016. Credit: David Rounce/Creative Commons
Residents on whether they feel that the Everest region is getting warmer.
Residents on whether they feel that the Everest region is getting warmer.
In 2017, scientists analysed hundreds of satellite images to map 1,541 glacial lakes in the Nepal Himalaya. 64 of these are dangerously full, close to bursting2 and flooding human habitations downstream, warns Sudeep Thakuri, a climate scientist at MidWest University in Surkhet, Nepal. Along with collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Thakuri scrutinised a remote sensing-based inventory from across the Nepal Himalaya to find that the number of glacial lakes had more than doubled in 2017, from 606 in 1977.
“The total surface area of these lakes has increased by 25% in just the 30 years between 1987 to 2017,” he says, showing the classic before-after pictures of the glaciers that establish this stark change.
Since the early 1960s, 29 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been recorded in the Nepal Himalaya, the most recent ones being in 2016 and 2017. In June 2016, an outburst of the Lhotse glacier lake, one of the largest in the Everest region, flooded the Imja valley with over 2 million cubic meters of water. American hydrologist Elizabeth Byers, who was doing field work in the valley with her colleagues, remembers hearing something like a rock fall. Within no time she saw a “black tongue of water, boulders, and silt” racing downhill toward the village of Chukhung in the valley. “I felt powerless to help people…and at the same time experienced utter fascination at the geologic process unfolding before my eyes,” she said. Byers, who ironically helps local communities improve awareness of glacial lake outburst floods, recorded a video of the deluge that was later published as first hand evidence of an outburst flood event3.
In April 2017, a catastrophic outburst of the Langmale glacial lake swept large parts of the Makalu-Barun National Park. The flood stemmed from a massive rockfall from the nearby Saldim Peak, and coupled with an avalanche, caused significant damage – carving canyons, stripping vegetation from the banks of river Barun, and depositing debris and boulders along a 6.5 km stretch of the river.
In mid-2018, Pramod Bhattarai, the former Chief Conservation Officer of Sagarmatha National Park, undertook a household survey4 in the highly vulnerable Khumbu region closer to the glacial lakes, upward of Namche in the eastern Himalaya. Bhattarai and his co-researchers were trying to find out how the locals perceive climate change trends, patterns and risks. “These communities in the eastern Himalayas are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their reliance on the monsoon cycle for farming and due to the continuous threat of melting glaciers,” Bhattarai says.
Of the 1,500 households, they managed to speak to 298 from five communities in Namche, Thame, Khumjung, Phortse, and Laushasa, some of the most populated areas within the Khumbu region. More than 70% of the Sherpas reported feeling an increase in temperature and drought in Khumbu. Upwards of three-quarters noticed decreases in both the intensity and frequency of snowfall. However, more than half of those surveyed were neither convinced that the phenomenon of climate change is exaggerated, nor did they have much of a view on the issue.
Kancha Sherpa has witnessed decades of such change firsthand. At 92 years old, Kancha is the only surviving member of the first summit ascent of Mount Everest expedition, led by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
This outburst of the Lhotse glacier lake, one of the largest in the Everest region, was caught on video in 2016. Credit: David Rounce/Creative Commons
Residents on whether they feel that the Everest region is getting warmer.
Residents on whether they feel that the Everest region is getting warmer.
Kancha Sherpa is the only surviving member of the first successful Mount Everest expedition of 1953.
"No harm should come to people of the mountains."
Though he isn't aware of the exact scientific details of the rate of glacial or permafrost melt in the high mountains, sitting in his family guest house ‘Nirvana Home Hotel’ in Namche, he reflects on the decades gone by. “Earlier, tall grass grew on the stretch from Gorakshep (a small settlement at 5,164 metres elevation) to the Everest base camp. There were cowsheds in Tengboche (3860m) and Gorakshep. Now the glaciers have retreated, the grass is gone and it's all covered with gravel,” he says.
Kancha, who has been a high altitude porter on seven Everest expeditions, is deeply spiritual in his ruminations about climate change, reflecting the sentiment of many in his community that the mountain Gods are unhappy because locals, tourists and mountaineers litter and soil them.
“I keep praying that the mountains should stay pristine, and no one should harm them, and that no harm should come to people of the mountains.”
Dwindling local research
Kaji Bista, the lab manager of Pyramid International Laboratory in Lobuche, a settlement near Everest Base Camp, tries to fix a faulty weather gauge under a blazing high-altitude sun. “We need to keep everything going,” he says.
When the lab was fully operational, scientists monitored permafrost melts, glacial retreats, precipitation and atmospheric pollutants from this base station. The lab is slowly spurting back into action after years of remaining non-functional. Its funders, the Italian and Nepalese governments, stopped financing it in 2015. In the absence of scientific staff at the laboratory, named after the building’s interesting structure, Bista has continued to hold fort for the last 12 years for basic maintenance of the lab and field equipment.
In February 2024, the Italian research body EVK2CNR and Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) rekindled hopes for the Pyramid lab by signing a five year funding agreement under which 37 new scientific projects are scheduled to start by 2025.
“The lab is leaking from the roof and lacks proper heating. Hopefully all that can now be fixed,” Bista says. With funds trickling in, he has started replacing faulty weather station equipment in Lukla, Namche and Pheriche. Bista also gladly made a trip to Kathmandu to buy new batteries for his favourite web camera on top of the Kala Patthar peak at an elevation of 5,644.5 metre. The camera captures live images of Mount Everest. Plans are afoot to get solar heating for the lab, where temperatures can go down to -40 degrees celsius in peak winters.
However, the near absence of scientific data gathering for years has resulted in limited information from the Everest region. This means awareness programmes by the government and non-government agencies are based on data that might be a few years old. As a result, local people remain ill-informed of the risks or estimated frequency of glacial lake outbursts, extreme rainfall events or landslides. “Whenever we start collecting data again, we need to tell school children and village people what this data might mean for them,” Bista says.
Ganesh Kharel, a teacher at the Mahendra Jyoti Secondary School in Chaurikharka village of the Everest region agrees that children should understand their fragile surroundings. “They are the ones who will inherit this beautiful but fast-changing landscape,” he says.
The children in Kharel’s school are curious about climate change but their curriculum doesn’t have much about the high mountains. “Our teachers tell us about what’s happening around us though, in bits and pieces. And we learn from life,” says Mingma Chhamji Sherpa, a student of class ten in the Mahendra Jyoti Secondary School. Mingma helps her mother in their agriculture fields. “We now grow cauliflower and capsicum – vegetables we didn’t grow earlier.”
Standing in the verandah of the North Face lodge in Lukla, Kharel points to the faraway Kongde mountain, four kilometres west of Namche Bazaar. “Just a decade back, the peak of Kongde was perennially covered with snow. Now the snow cover is decreasing a little every year and it is getting warmer in Lukla,” he says.
These comparative stories are routine in the high mountains. On the trek route to the Everest Base Camp, porters share tales of glaciers retreating, peaks losing snow and more water flowing down the Dudh Koshi river, the lifeline of the high Himalaya. They talk about rhododendrons flowering earlier – in January and not in their normal blooming month of March.
New livelihoods
As you enter Lukla, the airport-gateway to the Everest region, you can widely see what Mingma means – the challenges of adapting to climate change.
Agriculture is no longer a lucrative proposition. “Though some people are growing new vegetables like tomato, beans, capsicum and cucumber in greenhouses, in general crops grow very slow, and get frequently attacked by pests,” Kharel says.
Agricultural yields are a visible casualty of the changing climate in the high altitudes. In their survey, Bhattarai and colleagues heard most farm owners reporting damage to their crops from more weeds, increased pests and diseases, along with overall declines in yield. Farmers are increasingly responding to these impacts with more fertilisers and insecticides, and by reducing cattle-herd size or changing crop varieties. Some even buy yields from others for sustenance.
Agriculture is no longer attractive, locals say.
Agriculture is no longer attractive, locals say.
In the near-term, some perceive this shift as an opportunity. Kitchen vegetables are far more visible in the tourist markets along the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trail. “It isn’t as difficult to get these new vegetables to run our kitchen. You want a burger, I can now make a proper burger with lettuce and tomatoes, and bell peppers on the side,” says Avinash, who cooks for boarders at Hotel Tibet in Namche Bazar. Earlier, the only staple vegetable he served was potato – hashed, boiled, fried or stuffed with yak cheese.
Over the longer term, benefits are far less certain. New crops and more intensive use of fertilisers or insecticides could have undesired consequences on the fragile mountain ecosystems, Bhattarai says. “New crops may possibly be invasive for mountain ecosystems like Khumbu, highly regarded for their conservation value. Fertilisers and insecticides could have long-term impacts on this fragile agroecosystem,” he says.
Such changes could also put increased pressure on other protected resources. Near Namche, Sagarmartha National Park is a gem of 1,148 square kilometre of protected Himalayan landscape. But the national park’s protected buffer zone, which is increasingly and illegally being exploited for food and cattle fodder. “This may gradually lead to a spillover effect on nearby protected lands and cause irreversible damage to the ecosystems,” Bhattarai says.
Sherpas take the additional burden of carrying back waste from the peaks littered by tourists and trekkers. “When tourism and commercial trekking started in the 1990s, people would say ‘follow the pink toilet paper and you would reach Mount Everest’. Such was the state of littering,” says Ang Dorje Sherpa, chairperson of the Namche-based non-profit Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) which helps bring back tonnes of waste left behind by climbers on the trekking trails. Since the mid-90s, SPCC has implemented several waste management programmes across the region with laudable success.
Ang Dorje says the predominantly Buddhist population in the mountains believes in conservation and compassion as a way of life. “But small developing countries like us are paying a price for the emissions of the developed countries. We have very little contribution to global warming but face the biggest impacts,” he says.
Working with Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA), SPCC is now trying to set up global standards for management of garbage, use of river water and drinking water in the Everest region.
Climate eventualities are facing these highlanders in the face. The Nepal government and several non governmental organisations run projects to educate people in the Everest region’s far flung villages.
In 2009, just ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Nepal’s top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks to convene a cabinet meeting at Kala Patthar, adjacent to the Everest base camp. They put together an “Everest Declaration” making commitments on tightening environmental regulations and expanding the country's protected areas. That meeting spurred a handful of climate awareness building projects in the Everest region.
"Small developing countries like us are paying a price for the emissions of the developed countries"
Ang Dorje Sherpa
Ang Rita Sherpa, a trainer at the USAID-funded High Mountain Glacial Watershed Program (HMGWP), holds regular consultations with communities in Phakding, Namche Bazaar and Dinboche, appraising them of results from scientific surveys at Imja Lake.
“We often talk about shifting freshwater resources and the increasing risks tied to glacier-related phenomena,” he says. “But it is crucial to consider the community's concerns and priorities – they bear the immediate brunt of climate change,” he says.
Reaching and turning these indigenous communities to adapt to a new way of life still looks like the last uncharted mile. “To reclaim the roof of the world, these measures may be too little, too late,” Ang Dorje says.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d44151-024-00033-7
References
1. Bhattacharya, A. et al. Nat. Commun. 12, 4133 (2021) Doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24180-y
2. Wester, P. et al. Springer Cham. (2019) Doi: 10.53055/ICIMOD.762
3. Rounce, D. R. et al. The Cryosphere 11 (2017) Doi: 10.5194/tc-11-443-2017
4. Poudyal, N. C. et al. Ambio 50 (2021) Doi: 10.1007/s13280-020-01369-x
Author Subhra Priyadarshini
Editor Cliff Ransom
Photos and videos Subhra Priyadarshini
Design Sou Nakamura, Chika Takeda
Background song Sangita Baraili
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